Moving a node from one cluster to another

[Mike-H]

Hello,

I've searched and haven't been able to find what I'm looking for. Apologies if I've missed it.

We're running PVE 7.4-3 and we have a cluster of 11 nodes in various data centres around the world. We're having some corosync problems and also 3 of the nodes really belong in their own cluster. This whole setup has grown organically and wasn't planned out as it should have been from the start (the whole process was a learning curve for us). There's loads of info. about moving VMs from one node to another (which we've done without problem) and even some info on moving a VM from one cluster to another but I've been unable to find info on moving a node from one cluster to setup a new 2nd cluster.

The thing that makes me pause from just removing the node and then booting it up and creating a new cluster with it is all the docu. about removing a node from a cluster says it should never be turned back on again or it'll stuff your original cluster. These nodes to be moved cannot be re-installed, it's just not an option. Is there any way to safely move a node from one cluster to another? If any one can help it would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks, Mike.

 

[djardim]

I have tried to log into a removed node some time ago, and I verified that it still retains all the information from the previous cluster, which means it still has all the configurations, and expects to find all it's "brothers" some time soon. So unless someone has specific information, IMHO, there's no other easy way than to reinstall the node. The other option would be to manually remove/edit all the config, but I'm not sure if that can be done cleanly...

 

[Mike-H]

Thanks for the input. I hope there's a way to do it as reinstalling the node isn't really practical. Fingers crossed someone has a workable solution to post. I'm hoping that joining a removed node to a different cluster would get rid of all the old cluster config. and replace it with the new.

 

[djardim]

If you have a test server with enough hardware (not too much, just enough RAM and disk space), you could use a third-party virtualization solution to create some virtual nodes of Proxmox, set them up in a cluster, and try the moving around.

 

[Mike-H]

I tried with Virtual Box on my desktop machine and PVE wouldn't install. Gave it plenty of resources but it failed to create the disc structure it wanted. I gave it a 10GB vdisc but when I went into the debug info it saw it as >2TB and couldn't use it. Tried some solutions I found online but none worked for me, gave up in the end.